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'44: In Combat from Normandy to the Ardennes
by Charles Whiting
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Cooper Square Press (2002-04-30)
ISBN: 0815412142
EAN: 9780815412144
Dewey Decimal #: 940
Binding/Media: Paperback - 240 pages
SKU: C182-1015
Condition: Very Good
Comments: UNREAD but may have a crease or mark or minor imperfections.In stock-Sent fast from british bookseller.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
World War II scholar Whiting examines the events at the close of 1944, when Allied troops liberated France and began the invasion of Germany--a time that saw fatigue, illness, atrocities committed by both sides, and 100,000 Allied desertions.
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Customer Reviews
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Not sure why he wrote it
Rating  (3)
Date: 2010-07-02
This is a strange book. The narrative the author puts forward seems to be an attempt to provide the reader with a better understanding of combat in Western Europe from D-Day through the Battle of the Bulge. The difficulty is that this story has been written before, and the author doesn't present anything new. Almost all the information presented relates to the American and British forces involved in the fighting, with cameo appearances by the Canadians and the Poles. Until late in the book the Germans are only mentioned as antagonists, and then only briefly.
I was more than a little bit taken aback by how cursory the narrative in this book is. So the author, as a for instance, relates the actions of Brigadier General Teddy Roosevelt at Utah Beach without telling you how the general was related to FDR or his wife, or for that matter the president of the same name. You're left to either know this or guess. It just felt sloppy and incomplete, and if you look in the footnotes you'll find that this whole passage references a very obscure work as its source: "The Longest Day" by Cornelius Ryan.
When you read a book like this, you're looking for things that you haven't read elsewhere, or failing that interpretations of the facts that are somehow unique. Here, most of the information comes from other, published sources, and I'm not talking war diaries or official reports. Many, most, of the books cited are available currently. The author did do some interviews of some of the participants in the campaign, and that does add a little here and there, but nothing the author concludes really changes our view of the war or its impact in any significant way.
So you're left asking why he wrote the book, and there isn't really a clear answer. It just doesn't add that much to what we already know about the war.
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